Aging

Age is just a number, a matter of the mind—and if you don’t mind, it really doesn’t matter.
—Arlene R. Taylor

Use your brain by design to improve your health, enhance your relationships, live authentically, increase your options for success, retard the onset of symptoms of aging, and thrive!—Arlene R. Taylor

The other day a child asked me, “Are you old?”
“No,” I replied. “Just chronologically gifted.”
—Arlene R. Taylor

Age is relative and doesn’t matter a whole lot—unless you lose your brain because you didn’t use it.
—Arlene R. Taylor

All parts of the brain and body have a function and purpose. If used in balance, they can become well developed and age more slowly. If used inappropriately and out of balance, they can drain your energy and accelerate the aging process.
—Arlene R. Taylor

Brain

Your brain is your greatest resource. Use it to achieve health, happiness, and success!—Arlene R. Taylor

Your brain is a work in progress. What type of progress do you choose to make? —Arlene R. Taylor

You’re as good as your brain is good. Use your brain or lose your mind.
—Arlene R. Taylor

Your character lives in your brain. It’s what you do when people are looking and when no one is looking; the way you behave when you think you’ll never be found out.
—Arlene R. Taylor

You ask, ‘What can my brain really help me accomplish?’ You’ll never know how high you can fly ’til you spread your wings and try!
—Arlene R. Taylor

You become what you put into your brain.
—Arlene R. Taylor

Others may not remember exactly what you said or what you did or even how you looked—but their brains will remember how they felt in your presence.
—Arlene R. Taylor

Go where other brains have not gone and leave footprints for them to follow.—Arlene R. Taylor

You must be the change you want to see in yourself.
—Arlene R. Taylor

Balance is all about making choices. Your brain works best when your life is in balance.
—Arlene R. Taylor

Energy

You pay for everything in life, in brain energy if nothing else. Part of growing up involves deciding the price you are willing to pay, because nothing is free.
—Arlene R. Taylor

Distilled to the bottom line your basic medium of exchange is energy. Not money, not possessions, not birthright or position, not even talent. Energy.
—Arlene R. Taylor

Emotions

The flags of emotion can be your Achilles’ heel or your Aladdin’s lamp.
—Arlene R. Taylor

Emotions give you information, connecting the subconscious with the conscious. Learn to pick up on that information in a timely manner—and use it to make positive choices.
—Arlene R. Taylor

Pay attention when a core emotion arises in your brain and body. You need not emot or take immediate action (unless you are in danger), but file away what you learned for the next time you either find yourself in a similar situation or want to prevent it.
—Arlene R. Taylor

Exercise

Move it and use it—or lose it. It’s that simple. You can get stronger physically by working your muscles through exercises and you can get smarter mentally by working your brain through learning.
—Arlene R. Taylor, PhD

Forgiveness

Forgiveness is simply giving up the right to have someone pay for what he or she did to you.
—Arlene R. Taylor

When you choose to forgive, the person who benefits the most is you.
—Arlene R. Taylor

Forgiveness makes it possible for you to move from a victim position to that of a survivor.
—Arlene R. Taylor

Anger, bitterness, hostility, and unforgiveness are ravenous parasites that feed and feed until there is nothing left for the brain or heart to eat.
—Arlene R. Taylor

Gender Differences

Understanding more about gender differences doesn’t make them go away. The knowledge you gain can empower you to identify options and make collaborative choices that honor those differences without either taking them personally or allowing them to interfere with achieving positive outcomes. —Arlene R. Taylor

Although humans are more alike than they are different, differences do exist. You can allow yourself to become frustrated by them or have fun and enjoy them.—Arlene R. Taylor

Gratitude

Happiness is a personal choice. It begins with gratitude. Regardless of your circumstances, there is always something your brain can find for which to be thankful.
—Arlene R. Taylor

Habits

The true power of habits is rarely felt until they are too strong to be altered easily.
—Arlene R. Taylor

Addictive behaviors are simply pieces of brain software, habits that have run away with themselves.
—Arlene R. Taylor

Choose carefully what you do once—your brain has already laid down the outline for a piece of software, so it is easier for you to do it a second time.
—Arlene R. Taylor

Health

You only get one brain and one body to last your entire lifetime. Your health rarely improves by chance. It can improve by incremental positive change—and your recommended preventive maintenance program is a Longevity Lifestyle.
—Arlene R. Taylor

Good health is merely the slowest possible rate at which you can die—while still remaining in relatively good shape.
—Arlene R. Taylor

Many misunderstand that a balanced life, appropriate self-care, and good health, begin at home with yourself. As a physician once said, “Everyone is here to serve—but none was ever intended to be the main course.”—Arlene R. Taylor

You are what you eat and drink. Garbage in; garbage out. What you do today determines how you look and how you function next month and next year. How do you want to look and how do you want to function?
—Arlene R. Taylor, PhD

Get light—stay bright. Plants and animals cannot survive without sunlight; neither can you. Flood your home with it but be prudent about spending large amounts of time in direct sun without skin protection.
—Arlene R. Taylor PhD

The sensations of thirst and hunger are quite similar. Learn to tell the difference—drink water when you are thirsty and eat food when you are physiologically hungry.
—Arlene R. Taylor

Your brain must have water to live. Drink plenty of pure water every day to keep your brain from shrinking and shriveling like an old apple.
—Arlene R. Taylor, PhD

Your brain works hard helping you see, hear, smell, feel, think, and do, and it gets tired. Give your brain a break today—give it the sleep and play it needs.
—Arlene R. Taylor

Humor

Cheerfulness without genuine humor can be a most trying façade.
—Arlene R. Taylor

Innate Giftedness

No one on this planet can live your giftedness but you. And if you fail to do so, the universe will have been deprived of what only you can offer.
—Arlene R. Taylor

Perhaps the greatest loss you can experience in life is the loss of who you were intended to be innately—and the authentic realness you never lived in all of its thriving fullness.—Arlene R. Taylor

Most children arrive in this world authentically real—the challenge is to remain authentically real in adulthood.
—Arlene R. Taylor

True intimacy is simply the ability to be real, to be who you are innately, and to let others see you in all your authenticity. —Arlene R. Taylor

It costs you something to live authentically. Commitment is the price.—Arlene R. Taylor

Enjoy your brain's innate giftedness and avoid apologizing for tasks it finds energy intensive. You are unique on this planet and you can learn to thrive in your own way.—Arlene R. Taylor

If you don’t know who you are innately, you are at risk for believing who others say you are.—Arlene R. Taylor

Instead of asking who do others want me to be, discover who you are innately, for yourself, and start living authentically.—Arlene R. Taylor

Until you identify, understand, make peace with, and learn to like who you are innately, you will find it difficult to be content with what you have at this stage of your journey.—Arlene R. Taylor

Laughter

The sound of shared laughter may not be as loud as a clap of thunder, but its echo can be heard even farther and can last a great deal longer.
—Arlene R. Taylor

Laugh often and mirthfully. Laughter may wrinkle your face, but the absence of laughter may wrinkle your brain and heart instead.
—Arlene R. Taylor

Life

Learning life’s lessons is less about what happens to you and more about what you do with what happens to you.—Arlene R. Taylor

I’ve learned more from my mistakes than I ever have from my successes. Mistakes are golden opportunities to begin again with more awareness and, hopefully, more wisdom!—Arlene R. Taylor

Everyone has something to learn and everyone has something to teach. Fortunately, you can do both at the same time.—Arlene R. Taylor

Owning your own behaviors does not mean that you will always like everything you think, say, or do—it does mean you take responsibility for them.
—Arlene R. Taylor

Human beings tend to return to environments in which they feel comfortable; environments they perceive to be nurturing, validating, affirming, and accepting.
—Arlene R. Taylor

Every person needs a dream and every dream needs a plan. Willpower can help you turn your dream into reality.—Arlene R. Taylor

In general, people tend to treat themselves the way they were treated—and treat others the way they treat themselves.—Arlene R. Taylor

Life is like a mobile. One piece shifts and the entire pattern changes.
—Arlene R. Taylor

Life is really little more than a continuum of small choices—miniscule decisions. The consequences you experience result from their cumulative effect. My best guess is that genuine maturity involves the practice of making each small choice with an awareness of the potential long-term result of that decision.
—Arlene R. Taylor

Healthy shame reminds you that you have made a mistake—because you are human. Unhealthy shame tells you that you are a mistake.
—Arlene R. Taylor

To some degree we peer at life through a mist, viewing things as if in a fog. We see things more as we are, from our own perspective, and less as they really are.
—Arlene R. Taylor

Your life rarely improves by chance; it can improve by incremental positive change.
—Arlene R. Taylor

You can solve problems successfully only when you use thinking that differs from what you used when you became part of the problem.
—Arlene R. Taylor

Memory

Memory and imagination are twins. Memory is the historical diary of where you have been; imagination is the creative map for where you are headed.—Arlene R. Taylor

Mindset and Self-Talk

The most important things you will ever say are those you say to yourself each day.
—Arlene R. Taylor

Everything starts with a thought. Are yours negative or positive, discouraging or affirming, hopeless or empowering? You choose. —Arlene R. Taylor

Music

Study music! Current research is helping to demystify the brain-music connection and adding to the body of knowledge related to distinct advantages associated with the study of music.
—Arlene R. Taylor

Personal Power

No one gives you personal power. You already possess it because of your brain’s innate giftedness. Just stop giving it away.
—Arlene R. Taylor

Feeling powerless? Stop giving yours away! No one hands you power; you already possess it based on your brain’s innate giftedness. Start owning what is already yours and use it to be more successful.—Arlene R. Taylor

Success

Opportunities are never lost. Someone else picks up on the ones you miss and walks through open doors you ignored.
—Arlene R. Taylor

Boredom is the brain’s way of begging you to get a life.
—Arlene R. Taylor

Genuine success in life is more likely to occur when you understand your brain’s innate giftedness and match the majority of your life’s activities with what your brain does energy-efficiently.—Arlene R. Taylor